Transcription[]
The following is a transcription of the Official Outlander Podcast episode 210, "Prestonpans." It is provided here for the purposes of study, criticism, and accessibility.
RONALD D. MOORE: Hello, and welcome to the podcast for Episode 210, "Prestonpans." I am Ronald D. Moore, executive producer and developer of the Outlander television series, and I am joined once again by our other producer/writer, Matt Roberts.
MATT ROBERTS: Hi, everybody.
MOORE: Matt shot a fair number of sequences in this episode, and was there all through prep and well into the shoots, so I thought he'd be a good co-pilot for this one as well.
ROBERTS: Well, I'm glad to be here, and what are we drinking?
MOORE: This is Scapa 16. Cheers.
ROBERTS: Cheers.
MOORE: I think we knew pretty early on that we would do, like, at least one episode that was just a battle, right? And I think we settled on Prestonpans fairly early. There was mention I think, at one point, of the possibility of doing Falkirk. Falkirk, well, was the other option.
ROBERTS: The idea is rather than split up and do three or four little battles, to put our efforts into really showing what war was like, and Prestonpans felt like the one we could do, as well, the way history presented it to us, as people will see. This title card was kind of a neat idea. We had the pipes battling the drums for the British, I believe. I believe when we sat around thinking about that one, I think that one was your idea, Ron?
MOORE: I think, yeah, and I think it kind of came out of the idea that that's how they actually dealt with communications on the battlefield in this era. The pipes would play different tunes that actually gave orders to troops, and on the British side, they had different drum cadences and drum pieces that gave orders to the troops.
ROBERTS: Now, this opening was actually written for and shot for Episode 12.
MOORE: Was it 12? I thought it was 11 .
ROBERTS: It was 12? And obviously a beautiful location next to the waterfall, but it was filmed for that and then I think once everybody saw it, realized it fit perfectly to open this episode.
MOORE: Yeah. Yeah, I think we liked the beginning of this episode, but it never... It didn't quite set the right mood exactly, and I think it was when we moved this up, that the episode seemed to kind of come together. Are these snow candles, or is this...
ROBERTS: Yeah, no, it wasn't really snowing. It was, however, cold that day. But it wasn't snowing.
MOORE: I'm sure it was.
ROBERTS: As you can see, the sun in the background. Oddly enough, I have been standing in Scotland where it's been sunny on one side of the street and raining on the other side.
MOORE: And we got used to doing this scene several times over the course of this season, is playing the high command Charlie and Jamie, sort of arguing and figuring out tactics and strategy, and seeing really why the Jacobite rebellion failed. From our research, it feels like this is really what the case was. It wasn't so much that they were outmanned by the British, even though they were and they were outmanned and outgunned and all that by the British forces, but most historians, to my understanding, blame internal dissent of the Jacobite command as the reason why the uprising failed.
ROBERTS: It is. This is definitely one of those rebellions that the leadership... They had the fighting force that was willing to fight against, arguably, the greatest army at the time, the British army, and they had the heart and soul to go up against it. What they didn't have is the leadership.
MOORE: Yeah. Because the British army was a professional regular organization that was used throughout conflicts, and basically the Jacobites were creating an army from scratch, of farmers and cotters and merchants and guys that just were willing to go fight and leave their crops and grab their pitchforks, and tried to transform them into an army, virtually overnight.
ROBERTS: And, also, there was the belief from the top down that God was on their side. I'm sure every army believes that but this was very true with Charles and many of his leaders. This was filmed in a farmhouse in Clyne, Scotland. We picked a location that gave us a courtyard, this headquarters, and once again, a place where we can film multiple scenes, where Gary and his team can go out and dress an entire place so we can almost film 360, and that's what really helps us produce these episodes, 'cause they get big.
MOORE: I think I went to the location during some of these shootings. I recall it was pouring rain outside, so I think all the daylight is just provided from lights outside the windows.
ROBERTS: Wait a minute, pouring rain, Scotland?
MOORE: I know. It's hard to believe.
ROBERTS: Yeah. I love the detail on the outfits. These are the upper crust of the clans, if you would say, and they put on their best to go and be around the prince to kind of show that...
MOORE: Yeah.
ROBERTS: And I love the contrast to that, Jamie in this kind of badass leather.
MOORE: I think that's his father's jacket.
ROBERTS: Yeah, it's his father, Brian's jacket. And I like the contrast that he doesn't have to put on airs. That Jamie, he himself is enough, but all these other guys... And I like those subtleties of playing all the details.
MOORE: Yeah. I think Charlie's outfit is... I think Terry told me that's modeled on an actual outfit of his. He was painted wearing this particular tartan, this red tartan, that you'll see here in that outfit.
ROBERTS: So that's actually practical. It wasn't one... You know, we didn't film that someplace else. They could really walk in and out of that building into this courtyard which was utilized throughout this episode.
MOORE: And I think structurally, this episode, we rearranged it in editing as I recall. I think in Ira's script and the way it was shot, this was basically told a lot in flashback. Like we opened in the hospital on the eve of battle and the ladies, hearing the cannons in the distance, sort of told you the battle was underway, and then we would flash back through the episode to kind of show the lead up to it and the arguments in scenes like this. But then when it was all put together in the editing room, it didn't quite hold together as strongly. So we opted to sort of straighten out the chronology and make it into linear once again, and then that sort of forced us to create a different opening. Because the original opening, was Claire in the makeshift field hospital getting ready with the other ladies for battle. And so when we straightened out the chronology, you needed a different opening, and it didn't feel like opening with the guys just yelling at each other, and tactics, was really right, because it didn't set a mood, it didn't sort of give you a sense of dread or anything about to happen in the show, and that's why we pulled that scene up from 12 and put it at the top.
ROBERTS: Yeah, seeing different versions of 10, I think we landed on something pretty strong, to kind of get to the build of it. There's a little shot in shooting back through one of the openings, there's a green area back there and when you were standing there, it looked almost like we'd put a green screen there, but it's really the hill. And it's just super, it's so green. So this was filmed at a place called Torbrex Farm. We basically took ownership, or we leased the entire farm, and put the Highland army out there on one side of this bog, and put the British army on the other side, which is approximately about 400 yards apart. And it really was a marshy, boggy area. History actually says that the armies were separated... They were very close and they were separated by a bog, so we went out and found pretty much the perfect location for it.
MOORE: I know, it is an amazing location. And we found a place that would have hills on the sides and a bog in the middle, so you could kind of see, visually, why these two armies couldn't come to blows with each other. It's interesting, the warfare in this era, where the camps could actually camp across from each other and see each other and each sort of, like, biding their time, waiting for a maneuver, waiting for a tactical advantage, but they could see each other during the day. And this style of warfare would persist well into the 19th century. There were many Civil War battles in America where the two opposing armies could see each other.
ROBERTS: Even in World War I, in trenches. Until tanks came along and they could...
MOORE: Until maneuver was really like a strong... And mobility and communication. Also, communication is a big deal. Because it was hard to sort of relay orders. Relaying orders by bagpipe is not the most effective, you know, way of controlling an army.
MOORE: No, and flags they would use would get covered up by all the smoke, after the first volley of fire. You couldn't see 100 feet away.
ROBERTS: Yeah. I like the trickle down that the commanders are having arguments, and they can't get along. And then in this scene, even people who know each other well, they can't get along and that's just what war, you know, or impending battle, does to people. It makes them... It makes them act other than themselves. Or does it bring out the true self? I mean, that's...
MOORE: It was a great location, I remember going out there for a couple of these days, and just visiting for an hour or two and it was just... It was perfect, because you had this big Highland camp and you would walk through all the tents, and then you would see the bog and you just kind of felt like, "Oh, it's all kind of here for once."
ROBERTS: The other great thing that helped us during this block is if you just turn around from where they are sitting right now -is we filmed all the World War II stuff from Episode 209. And you were also out there for that when we were doing the jeep and the baseball and things like that. We built out visual effects, deep background. We added more people to...
MOORE: Yeah, a lot of the tents and people in the deep background. Not in that shot.
ROBERTS: No, not that, but any of the wider shots. So we had probably eight to 10 tents, and positioned them for the British on the other side of the bog. And so they were practical and probably 30-40 guys. And then what our visual effects team does is build that out. But we give them a practical place to start. And this is, well, way in the deep background, we have the higher, wider shots. They build out the tents.
MOORE: And it was almost like we just said, "On an angle like this, looking back there, if you see a green open ground, let's fill it with tents visually and digital. So that you don't get any sense of open field back there." 'Cause really only the tents in the immediate background, right behind Jamie, are the ones that are really there.
ROBERTS: Yeah.
MOORE: I'm trying to remember how we came up with this. This whole idea of the bog and Dougal and... Did it come up in the writers' room?
ROBERTS: It did.
MOORE: Because we were just trying to... We were looking for something for Dougal based off of 209... And I think... Was it also 'cause we're just trying to demonstrate the problem in a visual way of getting close to one another?
ROBERTS: That's what we were doing, is trying to figure out a way of saying, "Hey, why..." Because in a contemporary mind, you are going, "Hey, why aren't these guys fighting?" As you earlier explained, they camped so close to each other. It was weaponry that kept them away from each other really.
MOORE: Yeah.
ROBERTS: And this was a way of demonstrating why they couldn't get to each other. And so we actually made it a little boggier than it was already, to give it that feeling. This is one of those moments where we filmed... Half of this was filmed main unit and half of this was filmed second unit. And we seamlessly put it together in post, which was nice. Like that shot of him riding down, this is main unit stuff. And then you cut to the wide from the British standpoint, and that's all second unit stuff. And it really comes together nicely. So, we went across the hill and filmed this all in second unit. And, seamlessly, you can go back and forth with the main unit.
MOORE: It's pretty nice because even the light feels like it matches. It all feels like it is the same day.
ROBERTS: We filmed... That's all second unit, and digitally, we added that whole army up there. But it was a...
MOORE: This is also somewhat of a brave moment for the actor, Graham McTavish, to do this, because it required him to sit on the horse and take his hands off the reigns and hold them out to his side. And Graham will be the first to tell you that he's not a horseman by nature, and I don't think it's his favorite thing, so to sit up on a horse and take your hands off, and hold them out wide, takes a fair amount of guts.
ROBERTS: And trust. You have to trust. And going down a hill.
MOORE: And going down a hill... while we're filming you.
ROBERTS: Yes. Yeah. And I think that's the... I remember way back in Episode 1 , we were filming, and they had to race off. It was the ambush at Cocknammon Rock. And you could tell a few... I'm not going to name names, but a few of the actors on a few of the takes didn't look like they had been riding very long.
MOORE: And some of the horses decided to go in other directions.
ROBERTS: Other directions. So we had to... Well, let's just say we didn't use those takes. I think this was more... Initially, it was to find out how far the shooting, how far the distance... To measure out the distance, or the range. And we discovered that it was a better tactic to find out if there was a path through the bog.
MOORE: Yeah. And it's also nice just 'cause it emphasizes the inaccuracy of these weapons in the day. These smooth boar muskets just were not that accurate. It wasn't until they invented rifling in the barrel, which spins the ball and just makes it more accurate, that you could really have marksmen.
ROBERTS: And it changed warfare.
MOORE: It changed warfare. There was some talk initially about whether it should be Jamie to go do this thing instead of Dougal, but I think my feeling was and there was definitely... We argued about it a bit in the writers' room here and there, but it felt like this isn't something one of your army commanders goes and does. It's a fairly risky, almost foolhardy thing to do, and if Jamie is one of the high command, and he rides out on that horse and he gets himself shot, it's an incredibly stupid thing to do. But for Dougal, it's a way to sort of allow him to do something brave to win the prince's favor, to sort of get Dougal on your side, and it's a smart move by Jamie as a commander. I love that.
ROBERTS: I do, too.
MOORE: "What do I do with this?"
ROBERTS: Yeah. I don't think Dougal is used to having a man pat his beard.
MOORE: Yes, very few other men have patted Dougal's beard.
ROBERTS: And then lived to tell the story. Historically, Sullivan and Murray hated each other. And it trickled down through the whole rebellion and is actually probably one of the biggest problems that Charlie had.
MOORE: And he had a relationship with...
ROBERTS: Sullivan.
MOORE: ...Sullivan since childhood.
ROBERTS: Yes, since childhood. It's the reason he came along. It's always nice in our show when you know, we temper all the drama with some humor.
MOORE: Oh, definitely.
ROBERTS: I love that.
MOORE: There were a fair number of women that followed the Jacobite army along. And in fact, in the period, women, they were camp followers. They were literally camp... They literally followed the camp of the armies on both sides. And again, this would persist well into the 19th century, and American Civil War was the same way. Lots of wives, girlfriends, sisters came along with the army, trailed behind them, mended soldiers' clothes, did a lot of the cooking. You have to remember the armies of this day were not quite as logistically sophisticated as they are today. So a lot of the food and a lot of the supplies for the men was catch-as-catch-can. A lot of the camp followers would provide extra food for the men, and sometimes ammunition and clothing and weaponry and all that. So they were like a key part of the support structure of the Jacobite army. And even the British, we don't really play it, but the British army had its own group of camp followers as well.
ROBERTS: Yeah, and as armies modernized, they just started using enlisted people, and put them in those roles. But these are the medics, these are the chaplains, these are all those... The mess hall, this is all...
MOORE: This all comes from these ladies. And many more that we just don't play. There were a fair number of male camp followers, too, who were tinkers and smiths. They weren't formally enlisted people, but they did a lot of the hard work.
ROBERTS: This was built on set, the field hospital. This is actually taken from history. This is a real guy...
MOORE: Oh, yeah. This guy, yeah.
ROBERTS: ...who really did know the path through the bog.
MOORE: And he just showed up, right? He just said, "Hey, I know how to get there."
ROBERTS: The story goes is he showed up to tell the Highland army how to do it, and obviously the fictional part is us taking it to Jamie and... This is the risk/reward. Do you trust the guy?
MOORE: Do you trust this guy or not? Because a lot of decisions get made on shit like this. There was a famous incident in the American Civil War where a soldier found a dispatch wrapped around a couple of cigars in the grass, and he picks it up and it turns out it's literally orders from General Lee to his key lieutenants.
ROBERTS: Wow.
MOORE: Giving away the whole Confederate. I think it was Chancellor's... I'd probably get the name of the battle wrong. So they bring it back to the Union commanders, and they look at it and they have to decide whether this is fake, and a ruse that is going to trick them or is this legitimate. And they opted to believe it, and it was a reason why they were able to stop the Confederate army at a key moment. But it was one of those like, "Do you buy it or not?"
ROBERTS: Well, especially in that day and age... Well, even in World War II, all the deception.
MOORE: Oh, yeah, lots of deception, lots of double agents and spies and lies, and no real way to check on it.
ROBERTS: Misinformation. Yeah.
MOORE: The communication here is just what you can tell people. Forget the Internet, there's not even a phone or a telegraph. There is no telegraph. There's just nothing. You just have to make these decisions completely in isolation.
ROBERTS: Well, they had runners.
MOORE: So, how long does it take a guy to run to the next outpost?
ROBERTS: And I think one of the things that we always are aware of when writing these stories is we can't speed things up. It takes a long time, so it's... The question of our timeline is, sometimes we have dates. We know that September 21st is when the battle happened. We know when Culloden happens. We know those dates, but moving these, you know, how many days from here to here? This was filmed in that same courtyard we saw earlier, just a nighttime scene. One of the reasons we can do, we could stay there all day, film a scene earlier in the day, and then move on and do a nighttime scene.
MOORE: This is not the courtyard where we shot the wedding episode, right?
ROBERTS: No.
MOORE: 'Cause we talked about that. At one point, we talked about returning to that location.
ROBERTS: We scouted it, for this. At the wedding episode, there was a big stone circle in the middle where evidently, they throw all their waste during the summer, then it fills up, then it snows over in the winter.
MOORE: Charming habit.
ROBERTS: We have no idea why, but it was so visually kind of iconic, especially for that, and Gary couldn't figure out a way of getting rid of it, and we couldn't figure out a way of shooting around it, and not seeing it. So, this was actually a better location in the sense of getting to, 'cause it was... It's only about 10 minutes away from Doune.
MOORE: Yeah, I remember. That's one of the reasons I went 'cause I was right there, yeah.
ROBERTS: It was really easy to get there. Off a main highway, things like that.
MOORE: At this point in the series' run, going to the location was more something I would do as a treat, rather than that I had to go to work. Because I had long handed over a lot of the day-to-day responsibilities, really since the pilot in truth, to you and the other creative writer/producers on the show. And the way we shoot the series, the creative producer is the one that's there for the entire block of two episodes from prep through shooting, and is really the man or woman on the scene, the battlefield commander. And so I tend to kind of go in and out, usually feeling like I am in the way because I don't really... I hate being on the set without anything to do. It's like, I'm just here to stand and I'm inevitably standing where they want to carry a ladder through or I'm standing...
ROBERTS: Well, that's funny, I remember we were all the way across this big field and you had come out to visit one day, and we were lining up the camera and we were getting it ready, and Patrick came over, our first A. D., and he said, "Hey, Ron is in the shot over there. Do you want to tell him to just step behind the tent?" And I'm like, "No, go ahead, Patrick, tell him." We were like, "We should just put an outfit on him."
MOORE: Yeah, just give me a hat.
ROBERTS: And it was actually Marina's big hat. Sometimes that happens to us, even though we, you know... Being the producer on set, once you've rehearsed, once you've done everything, you're just watching takes, sometimes it's like, you almost want something else to do. Help someone carry something.
MOORE: Yeah. And I always feel, when I go, I always... I'm very aware that the director is aware that I'm there, and I'm trying not to feel... I don't want to make him or her feel like I'm looking over their shoulder, 'cause all that does is increase their anxiety and their tension. And I'm not there to check up on them, I'm just there to sort of have fun. I'm on the set of my show, and it's kind of neat.
ROBERTS: Which ironically, where we sit and where the director sits, it is right over his shoulder.
MOORE: Yeah, it's literally behind him. You're staring at the back of his head.
ROBERTS: Saying things like, "Don't fuck this up."
MOORE: Or, "How long is it going to take you to get this shot?" And some of the directors just don't sit in the chair. They will stand behind you, and they keep leaving, 'cause they don't want you looking over their shoulder.
ROBERTS: It's an odd leapfrog that you play. You move behind them.
MOORE: I love the whole relationship with Fergus as it develops over time.
ROBERTS: Yeah, it's one of my favorite characters going forward.
MOORE: Yeah, it's a great character.
ROBERTS: It's a great bond. And I think it showed early on how desperately Jamie wanted to be a father. Even in Paris, he takes this kid... He really didn't have to house him. He could've just utilized him...
MOORE: He could've just paid him.
ROBERTS: Paid him. But he takes him in and fosters him. We've been milking this for two seasons.
MOORE: Two seasons. Why not keep it going?
ROBERTS: Yeah.
MOORE: It's so shameless. It's just so perfect.
ROBERTS: I'm going to guilt you.
MOORE: Into kissing me.
ROBERTS: And the other thing that we haven't talked about a lot or at all, is that Claire has the knowledge of what happens in this battle. This is the scene where Murtagh mentions it.
MOORE: Oh, right, right.
ROBERTS: It's almost like a reassurance. It's a little callback to the scene we had in Paris where she tells Murtagh. It's probably a longer conversation than we actually saw on-screen, but now he knows she knows a lot about the history of things, the battles.
MOORE: This was an element I went back and forth on a lot, and I am still not entirely certain that we made the right call, or I made the right call here, just in terms of... It's definitely laid out in the book that she knows they win the battle, but should we have played that in the TV show? Does it help us? Does it provide an irony and an interest, or does it undercut the drama of the episode? And I'm still a little bit on the fence about it. I know we talked about it endlessly, so it's not a new conversation. I'm not sure if this was one of those areas that we should have departed from the book and not given Claire that foreknowledge, or does it kind of cement her position as the person from the future and remind us of the time travel aspect, and get us to the end, where, yeah, if she was right about this, maybe, unfortunately, she is right about Culloden. I don't know, I think I'm still kind of...
ROBERTS: Well, I think... There also is that thing that she obviously told them that they win, but had she had the knowledge and she didn't tell them, for fear of telling them would affect the battle. So, there are multiple ways we could have played it. Obviously, we chose to go this route and, you know, sometimes decisions... You finally just have to make the decision, or we'll just never film it.
MOORE: Yeah, we made the call, it's just, I don't know, and if we made the other call, I probably would still be wrestling with it now, because I'm not sure that not having her have that knowledge works either. It's an odd thing. It's one of these you can really argue it both ways. It's sort of a good example of some of the challenges of doing an adaptation, because you do get to those moments, where, well, you could play this the way it is in the book but does that undercut the drama of the television show, or does it enhance it and inform it? And sometimes, this is one of those occasions, I think kind of a rare occasion, that I'm not sure that there was a clear answer, or that we found a clear answer, because I think we just opted to go with the book version, and I'm not sure that's the right call or if it was the right call either.
ROBERTS: Well and the fact that we're talking about it all these months or actually a year later...
MOORE: It still is like, yeah.
ROBERTS: So what we did here in production is we went out to a great location. A place called Muiravonside County Park. And we filmed part of the battle, and then we actually built a massive tent at that farm from earlier. What the UK people would call a marquee. And we filmed the bits and pieces of the battle within that tent.
MOORE: Which was a brilliant idea. It sells it. You'll see coming up. Now this is not in the tent, right?
ROBERTS: This is not in the tent and...
MOORE: But it's to match this kind of feeling. So did you fog that up?
ROBERTS: We did, and it was what we had going for us at Prestonpans - and it worked well, and another reason why we chose not to do a lot of the other battles - is that Preston is very close to the ocean or the forth, and there was a heavy fog and mist the day of the fighting. We created this fog and mist, and it helped us contain the battlefield, so to speak. So, we did fog and mist tests, and every time we went outside, the wind tends to blow in Scotland and you can't control it, so it would blow all our mist all over the place. So the idea was, how do we control it? Hence, the tent. And we were able to control the density, and keep it kind of equal throughout the shot, so you didn't have these big puffs of mist flying through a shot, and that was the genius behind it. And as people will see coming up, it really seamlessly works.
MOORE: Like here, right, this is in the tent?
ROBERTS: This is...
MOORE: Or is this a mixture?
ROBERTS: It's a mixture. From here on out, it will be a mixture. You can see where there's trees. That's definitely outside. We couldn't bring trees into the tent. They're just too big to match, to actually hold them up. So this is a line of trees at the park and it opens up into a field, and once they get into the field, then that's all tent.
MOORE: And there was a whole little sequence in the book with Jamie sneaking up and the priest, and I'm trying to remember why we opted...
ROBERTS: It's usually a time thing.
MOORE: It's usually time. Time to shoot it. More than story time. Telling all those little... That little individual story was going to eat up so much production time.
ROBERTS: Yeah. This is a great shot, I love this shot, the lone...
MOORE: This is in the tent, right?
ROBERTS: This is in the tent, yeah.
MOORE: Just literally sleeping standing up.
ROBERTS: And all these little bits and bobs where you don't see. They are all second unit, but we came in after them and then we filmed all the little bits and bobs also in the tent.
MOORE: Yeah, see here, this was actually the beginning of the episode.
ROBERTS: Yeah.
MOORE: Claire was talking to the ladies and then they heard that cannon shot and the woman started reciting to Claire and this was how the episode was going to open.
ROBERTS: So, all this was in this massive tent. Greens department came in and put all the grass in, or filled in all the grass because about 15 minutes after we arrived, we destroyed it all, so they had to keep replacing the grass.
MOORE: And this is a great example of what we talked about from Season 1, which was sort of the fighting styles of the British Redcoats with their rifles and bayonets versus the Highlanders with their swords and targes and dirks.
ROBERTS: In the preceding episode, 9, Jamie was trying to train the army to fight in a similar fashion to the British, and this is exactly what he said, "The only way a Highland charge would work is if we have complete surprise," which they did. And I like that Jamie is not too proud to say, "Hey, let's use this because it will work."
MOORE: It will work.
ROBERTS: A more prideful general or a commander would have said, "No, my tactics have to work," and that's where you get the defeat. That's what makes Jamie so smart and such a great leader.
MOORE: And the shock of the charge is what carries the day. It's the shock of these wild-eyed Scots screaming, coming out of nowhere, that freaks you out and that breaks down discipline.
ROBERTS: We actually filmed the entire sequence where Kincaid gets killed.
MOORE: And it'll probably be in the deleted scenes.
ROBERTS: Because, obviously it's a time issue.
MOORE: This was literally cut for time because we did shoot it and he was going to flash back right there to what happened.
ROBERTS: Yeah. So that horse really did fall on the guy.
MOORE: This is one of my favorite moments, Fergus caught in the middle of the battle. And then this guy, coming up here really does hit him, right? Really accidentally runs into him.
ROBERTS: Really, that was...
MOORE: People were worried like, "Oh my God."
ROBERTS: This is the same soldier we used that was shooting at Murtagh in the opening. This is a real veteran who was an amputee. He came and graciously, uh... And this is actual history that there were commanders yelling at their troops to stand their ground as they ran by them. And I think that probably would have played a little differently had she just said the British are here. And then you get that beat of, "Oh, shit, we lost. We're losing the battle." But she says "prisoner," and it kind of gives it away there. This is, I think, going back to the flashback of it all.
MOORE: Yes, because there was going to be flashbacks. This was very early in the story, like early in act one, "Oh, my God."
ROBERTS: "The British have come in and..."
MOORE: "One of our guys is seriously hurt. Where is Jamie and how did we get into this battle?"
ROBERTS: "How did we get into this?" So when you flip to the more linear path, then...
MOORE: And it's a fair argument because I know Ira felt strongly that he wanted to maintain the flashback structure, because that's the way it was written, and there is a valid argument for doing it that way, but just somehow in the way the episode came together and you looked at it rhythmically, it just works better for us when you play it chronologically.
ROBERTS: And, also, you have multiple people watch this prior to airing. The process is, "I don't understand what's going on." Then you, as the ultimate decision maker, have to make people understand.
MOORE: Well, you've got to be willing to sort of admit that while there are definitely times when you do something, and you think it plays perfectly and then you show it to people and they go, "What the hell is this?" And you have to sort of go, "I get what it is, but nobody else does."
ROBERTS: Exactly.
MOORE: And as long as we're talking about Angus and Rupert, the intention was not to kill one of these two guys. Actually, we talked about this in 209. We briefly touched on it in 209. Willie was supposed to be our victim here. We were gonna kill Willie.
ROBERTS: We were gonna kill Willie because we'd set it up for an entire season and a half, we created an arc, we created a bond, he was the young one. He had kind of a crush on Claire, he idolized Jamie.
MOORE: He was the perfect victim. We had a problem with the actor not available, a lot of bitterness about that, unhappiness. Forced us late in the game to have to make a change. We now had a story that required somebody to - you can't tell a battle in a war story without somebody dying. If you don't, you're basically cheating what the reality of war is. You have to take losses, it's life and death, the stakes are enormous, you have to sort of honor that, if you're gonna tell this kind of story. One of our people had to die.
ROBERTS: And we know that there are certain people that just aren't going to die.
MOORE: Yeah. And then there are some people, like Kincaid and Ross, who are new players but have no real emotional resonance for the audience. That doesn't really hurt, you don't really take a blow when they pass. So it had to be someone you cared about. Now, without Willie, you're down to pretty much Rupert and Angus, and I think our first pass at this, it was going to be Rupert. And then I felt that, ultimately, it should be Angus, 'cause I felt like Rupert without Angus was going to be a sadder story later. They're both great actors, and I love both the characters. But there was something about Rupert without his best friend that broke my heart a little bit more.
ROBERTS: It was absolutely such a tough decision.
MOORE: It really was.
ROBERTS: We knew we couldn't win either way.
MOORE: No. It was a loss for the show. It's definitely a loss for the show.
ROBERTS: Absolutely. Absolutely. Even now we are talking about it, we filmed this a while ago, and right now, we're talking about it and it still feels... It bothers me.
MOORE: I wish Angus was there with us for the rest of the season, you know?
ROBERTS: I do, too. Stephen Walters is brilliant.
MOORE: Stephen Walters is great. This played a little differently in the book. As I recall, he rode the cannon in.
ROBERTS: He was riding the cannon in.
MOORE: And celebrating or something, right?
ROBERTS: I think one of the things we did differently this season, and it was probably a decision that was made early on, in episodes 2 and 3 and 4, when Fergus pops up, is that he bonded so quickly with Jamie and Claire, or Claire more, is that the arc is a little flatter than it probably could have been. This is them in the book. This moment is her coming to finally say, "I do love you," and that's why it's played like that here, but I don't think it's as powerful as it could have been because she was more put off with him in the beginning, and even after Faith, in the book is that she feels for him when he discusses the rape and stuff like that, and that's when they start really bonding. And it's this moment where she's like, "You are a part of our life forever."
MOORE: Right.
ROBERTS: And I think that was what we missed.
MOORE: Yeah. Yeah, I think we missed that play.
ROBERTS: This has always been a tough little sequence for me. I'm a big Dougal fan. I think he's a man of character and honor. This is a tough one for me.
MOORE: Oh, him killing Foster?
ROBERTS: Yeah. And I thought Foster was played... He's a brilliant character, he really was. It worked out... In Season 1, people will remember he's the honorable lieutenant who brought Claire and Dougal to Brockton, and they faced off with Black Jack, and that's the reason we brought him back, but... Yeah, well, we'll see what happens.
MOORE: I think my regrets about this is, I think to do this beat correctly, we needed to have told a small story with Foster.
ROBERTS: Yes.
MOORE: I think it's a mistake to bring him in now and then kill him in the same scene. If he was our one Redcoat officer that we were following. He was, like, the only guy that we were cutting over to their side of the lines and telling a little tiny tale and then we played this beat, I think it would have a different resonance, but now it feels gratuitous and I think this is a misstep.
ROBERTS: Yeah, it's the one beat... You're right, I think that's exactly it. If we had a little bit of a tale, then whatever that was would speak to this moment.
MOORE: It would, 'cause then it doesn't even matter. Like Dougal, I think, would play in any case. It's the Foster element. If we understood Foster, had some sense of his story, then the irony, or whatever it would mean, of his death would have a different resonance.
ROBERTS: A different impact, or at least an impact. Actually, this is exactly what you are talking about. When you just... That's why we had to pick between Rupert and Angus, is there was something that was going to resonate with the audience. Now with Foster's death, it was just a guy dying.
MOORE: Yeah, it's just a guy. Which is too bad, because I remember when we talked about bringing Foster back, it was sort of, "This will be great," and I didn't... I should have seen it in the script, but I didn't even see it in the script. It wasn't until I watched the episode and then I went, "Shit, we should have played something else with him."
ROBERTS: And we ultimately do that. We do that. We say, "Oh, we could have done this."
MOORE: This would play. And this is different, you read the scripts and you play a certain movie in your head, and you think that's the correct movie and then you see it sometimes on camera and you go, "That's not the right movie. Actually, I feel differently now that I see it."
ROBERTS: And sometimes that is because someone else is playing a different movie in their head, and it's shot slightly different. Or their tone is slightly different than your tone. We have tons of meetings about this. We have a tone meeting. It's literally where the director and the producers and Ron sit together, and we tone each scene.
MOORE: Yeah.
ROBERTS: We talk about - this should not be a humorous scene. This should have a little humor in it, or this should be this way or that. And we talk it out with the director, to make sure they know that this is our vision. We know you have yours, but we need to all get on the same page. This was actually debated quite a bit in the room as well.
MOORE: Yeah, this whole little beat, whether to include it or not.
ROBERTS: And I like it for the reason of it... Jamie is in a situation where there is a lot of... It's just after a battle, and once again, you can have a moment of humor. It feels...
MOORE: He's a leader and he's trying to lighten the mood deliberately.
ROBERTS: Deliberately, and laughter is the best medicine.
MOORE: Yes, it is.
ROBERTS: It really is.
MOORE: He's going to make a thing out of it. He's going to make them all forget the fact that they are in agonizing pain for a moment.
ROBERTS: For a moment, that's it. This is what makes him the leader of men.
MOORE: And then Charlie walks in.
ROBERTS: I like that subtle warning that Claire gives him, like, "Hey, this is a hospital."
MOORE: "Yeah, you're going to see some gross stuff there."
ROBERTS: "You're going to see some bad stuff and..."
MOORE: "Stuff you don't even know."
ROBERTS: Yeah.
MOORE: And I love Andrew, he's so great. You love him and you hate him at the same time, not even hate him, you just feel like, "God, you're such an idiot." But at the same time, you kind of love him, 'cause he's trying and...
ROBERTS: You almost want to give him a hug. And then a shake.
MOORE: And then say, "You know what, now go back home and we'll bring in somebody real."
ROBERTS: Exactly. And this actually really happened, is that Charlie really did ask the people to treat the English first.
MOORE: Treat them first.
ROBERTS: Treat them first because they are his father's subjects. There you go.
MOORE: I can't remember if the Dougal part of this was in the book. Okay, so yeah, we added that.
ROBERTS: I think... We often say that on the podcast, "Is this in the book, or was that in the book?" Believe it or not, we read all the books, we definitely do.
MOORE: Believe it or not, it doesn't sound like it.
ROBERTS: It doesn't sound like it but we do. But when we film these and break these and write these, for us, when we do the podcasts, it's so long ago.
MOORE: It's so long ago.
ROBERTS: And our head is already in the fact that we already announced that we have Season 3 and 4, we can say this, is that our head is already in Voyager, already in Drums, a little bit of Fiery Cross, so we're already so far down the road that what happened in Dragonfly is like...
MOORE: We do so many versions. We always start with the book, we always start with the book version of events. We start with the book dialogue that the assistants give us and you're working from that material. But then you've done so many changes and so many variations that then, the original, whether it was in the room or whether it was on the page, is always a little lost in the mists of time, of "where did it all start?"
MOORE: Absolutely.
ROBERTS: And then the things that we do is there are some bits and pieces that are from the book and then we've invented and created and they kind of mesh together, so really, there are bits from the book and bits not from the book, so those are the ones that even get harder.
MOORE: Yeah, they are really tough. Because the heart of this scene is definitely from the book.
ROBERTS: Oh, absolutely.
MOORE: Charlie came in, in the book, and he said, treat the British first and there was a whole thing about it. And I think it was at the moment that Jamie was pissing in the jar.
ROBERTS: Absolutely, that's all in the book. Yeah, there are... The Prestonpans of it all, is this is the Prestonpans chapter. And there are bits and pieces of the book sprinkled throughout and I think there are... Like the whole Dougal riding out and things like that, that wasn't, so... But we had to kind of continue Dougal's story from 9 a little bit, so... Now, this bit was... The last two days of filming the block were spent in this... In this farm house in the schedule.
MOORE: And this is a location or we built this?
ROBERTS: This is on stage. And they spent two days in here filming, filming everything in this location.
MOORE: And this was hard. This was a hard scene for the cast and the crew to say goodbye to Stephen. There was a sense of somebody actually dying. If you've had a cast member that's been with us as long as Stephen has, and to lose him, it's like a deal.
ROBERTS: There was... We had to pick up a... We had to come in and they had filmed this scene, and then we had to go back and pick up bits and pieces of this. These tight shots that they ran out of time and couldn't shoot. So, part of me wanted to have Claire actually lean down and finally give him a kiss on the forehead to say goodbye.
MOORE: Oh.
ROBERTS: And, once again, we talk about those moments, those beats, where I didn't have a ton of time to do it all, and I was working with one single wall which is...
MOORE: You're fighting the clock.
ROBERTS: You're fighting the clock. And those are the... Just that final seal. Because we had been playing that for so long, and I kick myself.
MOORE: And his death is a real war injury. It's like a concussion, right?
ROBERTS: Yeah. The explosion happened just behind him. He didn't get any... There was no shrapnel or anything but the concussion, the blast actually... It's what happens to racecar drivers. They stop suddenly, and everything inside them keeps moving and pushes against their ribcage and stuff and you can, over the course of... You look fine. It happens in skiing injuries a lot, too, where people are like, "You're just fine," and then all of a sudden... And this is what we played with Angus, that's why... This is how we flipped who was going to die. You think Rupert is going to die from his wound, and it's really all this internal bleeding that's happening to Angus and he ultimately dies. And this goes back to what you were saying earlier, is that to see Rupert over time...
MOORE: Yeah, because Rupert is a different character and Angus... Angus mourning the loss of Rupert is not quite the same. Rupert is just going to carry... He wears his heart on his sleeve a little bit more.
ROBERTS: And I think that... Were we going to make Angus angrier? I mean, does he get more violent? I mean, how do we play Angus?
MOORE: Yeah. And that wouldn't read very well.
ROBERTS: No.
MOORE: And he couldn't be subtly moping about, so it really didn't leave you anywhere to go.
ROBERTS: And it was one of the elements we took from the books and really adapted it and made it so much more as the Angus and Rupert characters are...
MOORE: Yeah. They really weren't a pair in the books at all. Rupert was in the books and I think even the name "Angus" was drawn from someone else.
ROBERTS: Angus Mhor is the guy who does the beating of Jamie in Episode 2. Here's that ominous warning. See, she couldn't have said this if she didn't tell him earlier.
MOORE: That's true, yeah. You'd have to go for a different ending. Played around with this quite a bit in editorial. There was a version where these guys came out singing this song, and then you end it on the ominous warning.
MOORE: And then we went back and forth and back and forth about where to actually...
ROBERTS: Because I believe in the early draft, that was the last line.
MOORE: That was the last line. I love Grant, here.
ROBERTS: Yeah, he's... We've always played Rupert as more the jolly guy, and to see him just completely wrecked and disheartened and heartbroken... And this is the thing about battle that... I think a strong way to play it is that you... The victory, there's an overwhelming victory but people still die.
MOORE: People still die.
ROBERTS: And so, do you celebrate? Or do you...
MOORE: They're trying to celebrate, but there's all this sadness within the celebration.
ROBERTS: You just lost your best friend. How do you get happy in that moment?
MOORE: Yeah. All right, well, I think it's a great episode, a lot of outstanding work across the board in various departments and...
ROBERTS: It was huge. This is our biggest episode, so many departments. Hats off, applause to everybody. Thousands of costumes. Thousands of set dec...
MOORE: Stunt work.
ROBERTS: ...and greens and stunt work, everything. So brilliant.
MOORE: Really a nice job. All right, well, thank you all for listening and we'll talk again soon on Episode 211. Until then, good night and good luck.